When considering criteria for brand name effectiveness, some of the guidelines include:
n The brand name should be simple. The aim should be to have short names that are easy to read and understand. Consumers havefinite mental capacities 108 CHAPTER 3: How Consumers Choose Brands
andfind it easier to encode short words in memory. This is the reason why names with four syllables or more are usually contracted. Listening to consumers talk clarifies the way that long brand names are simplified (e.g. Pepsi rather than Pepsi Cola, Marks’ rather than Marks & Spencer’s).
When consumers get emotionally closer to brands, they are more likely to contract the name; for example, Mercedes becomes Merc, Budweiser becomes Bud and an Apple iMac becomes a Mac.
n The brand name should be distinctive. Brand names such as Kodak and Adidas create a presence through the distinctive sound of the letters and the novelty of the words. This creates attention and the resulting curiosity motivates potential consumers to be more attentive to brand attributes.
n The brand name should be meaningful. Names that communicate consumer benefits facilitate consumers’ interpretations of brands. For example, Kwik Fit, Ray Ban and WeightWatchers leave little doubt about the benefits to be gained from these brands. Creativity should be encouraged at the expense of being too correct. A battery branded‘Reliable’ would communicate its capability but would not attract as much attention as the more interesting‘Die Hard’.
n The brand name should be compatible with the product. The appropriateness of the name Timex with watches is more than apparent, reinforcing the meaningfulness of the brand name. However, marketers should beware of becoming too focused on specific benefits of the product, especially in a mature market. Orange offered a dramatic and refreshing alternative in a sector where the tradition of brand naming was built on the suffixes
‘tel’ and ‘com’.
n Emotion helps for certain products. For those productfields where consumers seek brands primarily because they say something about the purchaser, as for example in the perfume market, emotional names can succeed.
Examples here include Clinique Happy and Ralph Lauren’s Romance.
n The brand name should be legally protectable. To help protect the brand against imitators, a search should be undertaken to identify whether the brand name is available and, if so, whether it is capable of being legally registered.
n Beware of creating new words. Marketers developing new words for their brand have to anticipate significant promotional budgets to clarify what their invented word means. For example, the successfully invented names of Kodak, Nokia, Esso and Häagen-Daz succeeded because of significant communication resources.
n Extend any stored-up equity. Whenfirms audit their portfolio of current and historical brands, they mayfind there is still considerable goodwill in the marketplace associated with brands they no longer produce. There may be instances when it is worth extending a historical name to a new line (e.g. Maltesers to ice cream), or even re-launching historical lines (e.g.
Cadbury’s re-launch of the Wispa bar in response to customer demand).
109 Issues Associated with Effective Brand Names
n Avoid excessive use of initials. Over time some brand names have been shortened, either as a deliberate policy by thefirm or through consumer terminology (e.g. International Business Machines to IBM, General Electric to GE, Music Television to MTV and British Midland to bmi). It takes time for the initials to become associated with brand attributes andfirms generally should not launch new brands as arrays of initials. The
hypothetical brand North London Tool and Die Company certainly fails the criteria of being short, but at least, unlike the initials NLT&D, it does succeed in communicating its capabilities.
n Develop names that allowflexibility. The hope of any marketer is for brand success and eventually a widening portfolio of supporting brands to better satisfy the target market. Over time, more experienced consumers seek a widening array of benefits so, if possible, the name should allow the brand to adapt to changing market needs. For example, with an abstract name, Apple was able to diversify from computers into MP3 devices and mobile phone handsets, while retaining the image of the brand.
n Develop names that are internationally valid. It is essential to establish during the naming process what geographical coverage the brand will assume.
When a name is intended for only one nation or one culture, the cultural associations linked to it are immediately evident. Whenever the brand name spans different languages and cultures, it becomes more difficult to forecast customers’ responses. For instance, the Mexican food corporation Bimbo, which has no specific meaning in Spanish, has negative
implications in the USA and UK.
Whilst these points should contribute to the way organisations think about the appropriateness of different brand names, we should never lose sight of the fact that it is consumers who buy brands, not the managers who manage them. For this reason it is always wise, when short-listing potential names, to undertake consumer research and evaluate consumers’ responses. For example e are the words harsh sounding? Are there any negative associations with the words?
Are the names appropriate for the proposed brand? Do the words‘roll off the tongue’ easily? Are the words memorable? e and so on.
Once a decision has been taken about the brand name and the brand has been launched, thefirm should audit the name on a regular basis. This will show whether or not the meaning of the brand name has changed over time as a result in changes in the marketplace. If the environment has changed to such an extent that thefirm is missing opportunities by persisting with the original name, then consideration should be given to changing the name.
Finally, in an era of corporate acquisitions,firms need to consider how their brand naming strategy needs to be revised as a result of mergers and acquisi-tions. A company with a name that doesn’t fit the direction of the purchaser 110 CHAPTER 3: How Consumers Choose Brands
should not be automatically dropped, in favour of the parent corporation.
Rather, there should be an assessment of the inherent equity in each corpo-ration’s name, a consideration of the long-term markets for each corporation and the strengths and weaknesses of individual versus unified naming.
PricewaterhouseCoopers was formed from the merger of Price Waterhouse and Coopers and Lybrand in 1998. The combination of the two brand names allowed the new brand to benefit from the heritage of its two founding firms.